


Notes Made On Blank Pages

by morganya



Category: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-10
Updated: 2004-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:09:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/morganya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it helps to write it down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notes Made On Blank Pages

He'd kept journals since he was in high school. His parents still had his old loose-leaf notebooks up in the attic in Carmel. He'd found them the last time he went back to visit; his mother had lovingly packed them away, stacked one on top of the other, secure in their very own box. They still hadn't aged very well; the front covers were smeary with old dust, the ink faded on the pages.

What he'd actually written in them hadn't aged very well, either. Lots and lots of 'I got up. I do not like cornflakes' entries, as well as the requisite 'no one understands me' teenage poetry. Going through them had been embarrassing.

He'd wondered, remotely, if his mother had been tempted to go through them while she was putting them away, or if she'd stopped herself, afraid of what she might discover in hindsight.

He still kept journals. At the beginning of each year, he bought new ones, usually five at once, a haphazard assortment of brightly colored covers and blank creamy paper. He'd stopped using loose-leaf notebooks in college, after spending a few too many hungover hours using them in class. Writing about his life, such as it was, in the same notebook he'd used to scrawl down notes about the limbic system seemed...inappropriate somehow.

He kept up the habit even after leaving school, using a typewriter and, later, the computer for writing articles, using a tape recorder or the old handy-dandy loose-leaf notebooks during interviews, and keeping the personal stuff, mostly, confined to the journals. Everything in its place.

He tended to compartmentalize his life, someone had once pointed out to him. Ted at work, Ted with friends, Ted with family. Never the twain shall meet. Ted recognized the truth of the statement, but didn't bother too much about it. It was easier to be observant and clear-headed when there was a minimum of overlap.

Now, there was nothing but overlap.

He used to have a couple of mental pictures of himself. Either he was lying on the couch, drinking Scotch and water with the TV on, or he was hunched over the computer mumbling, "Deadline, deadline, deadline," to himself. He liked those mental pictures, despite the sheen of anxiety involved in the computer one; there was a sense of wholeness to them, a feeling that he was getting along in his little world.

Now both of his mental pictures had been replaced by the picture of him on TV, and it didn't seem to be part of him at all, just something that was happening to him.

He enjoyed it, of course, he wasn't being ungrateful. He just hadn't been prepared. Which was probably a massive failure of his Boy Scout training. Some days, his main fear was that he would be talking to someone and say out of nowhere, "So, ever feel like you don't exist anymore?" It wasn't something you talked about in public. It was important to keep the game face on, always be polite, never be too personal or give too much away. Always act like you're not involved, no matter what's happening.

He'd always been good at pretending to be more objective than he actually was. He worked hard to maintain it.

It was the journal that helped the most, a small, forest green one that he'd gotten at Barnes and Noble in Chicago. At first he only wrote in it on airplanes, shuttling back and forth from New York, worrying about eyestrain when the lights went down in the cabin. He had no doubt that he was writing awful crap - self-indulgent, subjective entries just one shade away from being, 'I got up. I do not like cornflakes.' But it helped. It at least gave him the illusion that he wasn't being swept away.

He started carrying the journal around with him, because there were many hours in the day, and a lot of those hours were spent waiting for the cameras to set up, or sitting in makeup before doing another interview, or being driven to talk shows and premieres, and goddamn if it didn't get tedious.

What was that he said about not being ungrateful?

The other guys noticed after a while. He tried to be discreet, but there were ink stains on his fingers and he kept having to borrow pens from everybody. Then Carson caught him in the men's room, making notes next to the running faucet, which he'd forgotten to turn off. It was open season after that.

"Little Anais Nin," Carson said. "Can I read what you said about me?"

Jai said, "I'd have thought you'd be burned out, what with our book and the cookbook and everything...So, what did you say about me?"

"Everybody needs an outlet," Kyan said. "Deal with the stress. Um, did you say anything about me?"

Thom said, "You should publish it. People would be lining up to buy it. I'd buy it. Because I want to know what you said about me."

He had to admire Thom's practicality. Thom was almost entirely uninterested in the existential implications of being on TV. The closest he ever came was talking about how it could help the design firm in the long run, but he had to be in a fairly serious mood and even then it required a certain amount of goading to get him to start. Otherwise he gave no sign that he viewed himself any differently than he had before. He would shrug and say, "I'm just busier. Not by much, though." Work was work.

Ted thought, maybe that was it, maybe he just needed to re-prioritize. Stop over-thinking and just work. After all, it couldn't be like this forever.

Could it?

He mulled over the thought of publishing. Maybe it would just be admitting that the show had taken over, that he had become the person on TV. Maybe it would just be another way of keeping himself stable. If he was going to change, at least he could take control over it.

He couldn't be self-indulgent and prosaic if he was going to publish. He'd have to rewrite the original entries, so that they were funnier and wiser and more universal. He wrote in the apartment in Greenwich Village (Chicago was a long way away now), replaying the year in his head. He prowled between rooms when he couldn't think of exactly the right words. He bought a new journal to make notes in; he kept ducking into the men's room at work whenever there was a spare moment, writing next to the sink. Carson said, "If I didn't know better, I'd think you had a coke habit."

It was okay, it was fine. He was doing what he had to do. He was doing the right thing. He was pretty sure it was the right thing.

There were good days. He could stand over the stove with a glass of wine in his hand and forget about the lights and cameras and the edits he still had to do in the little forest green journal. He guessed it was true for all of them, that they forgot about everything else when they were actually together, doing the show. The show was chaos, but at least it was a contained chaos, growing more and more familiar to them all.

The straight guy this week was named Jason - sweet kid, if fairly aimless. The mission was to free his inner go-getter with a dinner for his boss and co-workers. It was meant to be an evening for networking.

He made Indian food because it was tailor-made for sharing, lots of 'Pass the samosas,' and 'Want more rice?' If Jason didn't spill curry down his shirt front, everything would be fine.

It was mid-afternoon. They had rushed around for three days, praying everything would come together right. So far, so good. The lentils were soaking for _dal,_ there were tomatoes and ginger simmering in coconut milk, and the crew was making noises about finally going for lunch, no doubt spurred by the smell of shrimp sizzling in a mixture of butter, coriander and red chili. Thom was thumping around the living room, talking to himself in a steady, undecipherable flow of gabble.

"I think we're due for a break," Neil, the assistant director, said. "Ted, you want to come?"

He shook his head. "I should stay here and watch. There might be an unexpected situation."

"Suit yourself," Neil said. Ted poked the lentils with a fork and watched the crew disperse, extraordinarily quickly for people hauling twenty pounds of equipment around. Someone yelled, "Hey, Thom, wanna go for lunch?"

"No, thanks," Thom yelled back. "But bring back coffee."

Ted looked down at the stove. He vaguely regretted not appointing someone to stand by him and keep him company. If he didn't have someone around to talk to, the bone-weariness became unignorable, and it was hard to think clearly.

"Simmer," Ted mumbled and gently added the shrimp to the coconut milk, watching it thicken as he stirred. He covered the pot and turned the heat down a notch more. Twenty minutes before it would be ready. He'd go jump up and down for a little, then come back when the blood was flowing and he didn't feel like passing out.

He went into the living room. Thom had ceased talking to himself and was arranging Jason's collection of plastic dinosaurs around the room.

Ted looked at Thom's back and felt something like vicarious pride. Thom had taken what had been a beer-soaked frathouse living room and turned it into a young executive's streamlined pride and joy, all warm colors and welcoming light.

"Looks fantastic, Thom," Ted said.

"Yeah, you think so?" Thom turned around. "Okay. Seriously? You look like hell."

"Wow. Thanks."

"No, really. Sit down or something."

"I'm not exactly an _invalid,_ Thom..."

"Will you just sit your ass down?"

Ted sat down. Jason's new couch was stormcloud gray, unthinkably soft. Ted had no idea how he was going to stand up again.

"Where'd the other guys go?" Thom said. He put a bright blue Tyrannosaurus on the mantle, scowled at it, moved it slightly to the left, then moved it back.

"They're running around Manhattan with Jason, I'm guessing."

"Yeah, that makes sense." Thom stared at the handful of extinct creatures he still had in his fist. "Everything's basically _done,_ if I could just figure out what to do with all of his..."

"Knick-knacks. Tchotkes..."

"Crap," Thom finished. "I mean, I don't want to clump them all together, because then it's all, Hi, I'm twenty-eight years old and wanna see my toys? And I don't want to just fling them all over the space, because then it looks like I didn't know what to do with them, which I don't..." The last half of the sentence was muffled; he was talking through a yawn.

"It's going to be fabulous."

"Yeah..." Thom said. He plonked down next to Ted, setting the dinosaurs in front of them on the coffee table. "You like the couch? It's great, isn't it?"

Thom had validation issues.

"Great," Ted said. He scratched Thom's back lightly. "You've done wonders."

"Uh."

"Thom?"

"Yeah?"

"If my curry winds up burning because I fell asleep on this couch, I'm going to blame you."

"Oh. Okay." Thom rubbed at his right eye with his knuckle. "You know, I can't move."

"Neither can I. Got any ideas what we should do?"

"Nuh-uh."

He put an arm around Thom's shoulders. "Think we might work too hard?"

"Maybe _you_ work too hard," Thom said, eyes already closed. "'M fine."

"Okay."

He waited until Thom's head had dropped onto his shoulder, strong body gone limp and heavy in sleep. Ted put his hand up and brushed the hair away from Thom's face, memorizing every detail, already planning how he was going to write this down.


End file.
